How to become a blockchain developer

If you are dreaming of creating your own cryptocurrency, learning how to write smart contracts and blockchain applications, but do not understand programming, or if you have been developing for a long time, but have only learned about cryptocurrencies and want to retrain, it is possible. In this article, we will tell you how to independently study the question, what knowledge will be useful and where to find them.

What kind of base is needed for blockchain development?

If we are talking about the development of smart contracts on some of the platforms, for example, Ethereum, then the “base” is not needed. You need only the ability to use search engines and a little patience. Themselves, smart contracts were conceived precisely so that they could create by people who are not particularly familiar with coding. The only difficulty that may arise is the lack of training materials, because this technology is very young.

If we are talking about the development of our own blockchain, then a serious base is needed. But only it will not be enough.

What knowledge is worth buying

The main thing is to understand how the technology works. Most of the limitations in blockchain development are related to the peculiarities of the technology, which does not allow the use of some projection patterns. With this, the first difficulties that arise during the immersion stage are related. However, after you have an understanding of the technology itself, problems in order to master one of the programming languages ​​for writing smart contracts will no longer arise. In addition, I would recommend carefully reading the White Paper of the cryptocurrency, on the basis of which you are going to write smart contracts.

Is it possible to learn independently or better to take special courses?

Of course, any knowledge can now be purchased independently, at least because most of the projects are laid out on GitHub. The main problem is the speed of obtaining knowledge. On the one hand, there is a lot of information about the blockchain, but it is very shallow, so most of the time it will go to filtering the data. On the other hand, there is a danger that you just repeat all the actions of the teacher, copy all the code from the book, but you will not learn anything. Therefore, I would recommend taking courses where you can quickly acquire basic knowledge and in parallel engage in self-study, for example, set a goal – to implement a particular project.

What programming languages ​​are needed?

We believe that it makes no sense to separate the programming languages ​​by the degree of usefulness for learning something new. A programming language is only a tool that is suitable for certain cases.

In large companies from the Silicon Valley in general there is no such thing as a developer in one or another language. So if you can program it is a big plus. If you have an understanding of how to do it correctly, knowing the basic principles of building architecture and projection patterns is an even bigger plus.

Useful sources for a beginner specialist

We recommend the book developer Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Also, you need to read White Paper of the cryptocurrency, on the basis of which you are going to develop. After you understand the technology itself, go on to reading the documentation. We do not recommend immediately starting with the execution of a thousand and one tutorials, because due to the fact that the technology is young enough, only the official documentation can serve as the only reliable source.

But after studying the documentation, you can go on to perform simple tutorials. As for code examples, there are quite a few open source projects that are easy to find on GitHub.

Also now there are communities for developers, Telegram chat, online courses, groups in LinkedIn and so on, so there should not be problems with the search for a community.